I have often thought of the question of whether long-term planning is
somewhat akin to divination, which is an abomination to God. It is clear
that to work for specific future events is worse than divination since one
wants to, in a sense, "control" the future that is actually only God's to
determine. I suppose we ought to only please God instant by instant and in
so doing will not be manipulating neither people nor things around us in
order to achieve particular future outcomes. Moorad

> Lucy responds:
>
> I have never held the popular opinion that "social Darwinism" or
> "survival of the fittest" was in any way cruel or inhumane. Because of
> this, I have also not had philosophical difficulties accepting that God
> would design a system that seemingly works this way.
>
> Consider...in the long run, it is much more humane and compassionate to
> have some humans lose their lives so that others may not only live but
> may live well. In the movies this is presented as heroic, but in
> biology we somehow depict the process as inhumane. So, we can take a
> small population of starving people and feed them, and forty years later
> we end up with millions of starving people - because they reproduced and
> still live on non-arable land. Have we created a humane situation? Or,
> we can extend the lives of a small population of people with an
> incurable cancer, who then reproduce and create a much larger population
> of people with incurable cancer. Is this a more humane situation? Or,
> we can provide welfare and housing to long-term drug addicts, who then
> reproduce and bring a whole family of long-term drug addicts into the
> population. Is this a more humane situation?
>
> Is long-term planning for the human race unGodly? Does God think in the
> long-term or only act in immediacy?
>
>
>